Chapter 01
The Exceptional Manager: What You Do, How You Do It
True / False Questions
TrueFalse
2. / Exceptional managers have a gift that cannot be taught.
TrueFalse
3. / Management includes integrating the work of people through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the organization's resources.
TrueFalse
4. / To be efficient in management means to use resources wisely and cost effectively.
TrueFalse
5. / Efficiency and effectiveness are terms used interchangeably and equivalently in management.
TrueFalse
6. / Automated telephone systems are typically both very effective and very efficient.
TrueFalse
7. / An effective manager has a multiplier effect on the organization, meaning his or her influence is multiplied beyond the results achievable by just one person.
TrueFalse
8. / John Hammergren's compensation of $145 million in 2010 as CEO of health care technology firm McKesson is typical for CEOs in North America today.
TrueFalse
9. / Studying management is likely to help you once you are in a manager role, but is unlikely to be beneficial before then.
TrueFalse
10. / One of the payoffs of studying management is an improved understanding of how to deal with organizations as a customer.
TrueFalse
11. / One of the rewards of being a manager is that you can build a catalog of successful products or services.
TrueFalse
12. / If you enjoy mentoring and helping others to grow, management is a great job.
TrueFalse
13. / Most people prefer to have a combination of a high level of skill and low level of challenge while at work.
TrueFalse
14. / Organizations can gain a competitive advantage by matching their competition in terms of quality, responsiveness, and efficiency.
TrueFalse
15. / The decline in revenue in the newspaper industry is due to a sharp drop in the number of people reading American newspapers.
TrueFalse
16. / When managing for competitive advantage, the first "law" of business is "take care of the shareholders."
TrueFalse
17. / Taking care of the customer applies equally well to nonprofit and for-profit businesses.
TrueFalse
18. / In business, innovation is defined as finding ways to deliver new or better goods or services.
TrueFalse
19. / Whereas a generation ago organizations rewarded employees for their efficiency, today the emphasis is on length of service.
TrueFalse
20. / Despite continued immigration, the proportion of racial or ethnic groups in the United States is expected to be stable well into the next century.
TrueFalse
21. / When he or she does not speak the local language, a manager should rely on gestures and symbols since their consistency of meaning provides a form of universal communication throughout the world.
TrueFalse
22. / The Internet is a global network of independently operating but interconnected computers, linking hundreds of thousands of smaller networks around the world.
TrueFalse
23. / The buying and selling of goods or services over computer networks is known as e-exchange.
TrueFalse
24. / One reason e-business is so important is that the Internet dramatically lowers the cost of communication.
TrueFalse
25. / Text messages and documents transmitted over a computer network are called cyber-messages.
TrueFalse
26. / Project management software allows managers to plan and schedule the people, costs, and resources to complete a project on time.
TrueFalse
27. / A problem typically associated with interconnected databases on the Internet is the potential to overwhelm employees with too much information.
TrueFalse
28. / One advantage of e-business is that organizations and teams are no longer as bound by time zones and locations.
TrueFalse
29. / Viral staffing is the term used to describe working from home or remote locations using a variety of information technologies.
TrueFalse
30. / Meetings that are conducted via telecommuting use video and audio links along with computers to let people in different locations see, hear, and talk with one another.
TrueFalse
31. / Collaborative computing involves using state-of-the-art computer software and hardware to help people work better together.
TrueFalse
32. / Integration management is the implementation of systems and practices to increase the sharing of knowledge and information throughout an organization.
TrueFalse
33. / In recent years, white-collar crime in the United States has become very rare.
TrueFalse
34. / The Josephson Institute suggests a TEAM (Teach, Enforce, Advocate, Model) approach for parents to encourage good financial habits in children.
TrueFalse
35. / Unsustainable business practices have resulted from an often accepted but untrue notion that natural resources are limitless.
TrueFalse
36. / Having to attend too many meetings or feeling a lack of respect are typical reasons that some people don't find being a manager fulfilling.
TrueFalse
37. / One's experience in management remains very insulated from the company's culture.
TrueFalse
38. / The "management process" is sometimes called the "four management functions."
TrueFalse
39. / When Barrett, a college administrator, is determining which of several degree programs his campus will offer, he is involved in the management function of controlling.
TrueFalse
40. / Organizing is the arranging of tasks, people, and other resources to accomplish work.
TrueFalse
41. / When Carla revises the waitstaff schedule at her restaurant to have more personnel available during the newly busy breakfast rush, she is engaged in organizing.
TrueFalse
42. / When Shannon reviews reports and determines that she has four underperforming salespeople with whom she will need to talk, she is performing the controlling managerial function.
TrueFalse
43. / When a manager is motivating others to work hard to achieve the organization's goals, she is engaged in the management function of leading.
TrueFalse
44. / Tucker recently attended a dinner for the new CEO. He came away feeling very excited and anxious to do his part to help the company achieve its goals. In this instance, the CEO was performing the management function known as planning.
TrueFalse
45. / According to Peter Drucker, "knowledge workers" have very little technical skill.
TrueFalse
46. / The traditional organizational model is most often represented by a funnel shape.
TrueFalse
47. / There are managers at three levels of an organization: top, middle, and first-line.
TrueFalse
48. / First-line managers make long-term decisions about the overall direction of the organization and establish the objectives, policies, and strategies for it.
TrueFalse
49. / Mingjin is a branch manager in Albuquerque who reports to the CEO in Denver and to whom three other managers at her facility report, so she would be termed a middle manager.
TrueFalse
50. / A first-line manager directs the daily tasks of nonmanagerial personnel.
TrueFalse
51. / A vice president of production is a general manager.
TrueFalse
52. / A general manager typically oversees several departments within an organization.
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53. / The main purpose of a nonprofit organization is to offer services to some clients.
TrueFalse
54. / According to Mintzberg's research, managers rely more on verbal than on written communication because of the time it takes to accomplish the latter.
TrueFalse
55. / Since the 1960s research conducted by Mintzberg, the typical general manager has reduced her work week to the traditional 40 hours.
TrueFalse
56. / Most managers require lengthy, uninterrupted periods during the regular workday to accomplish their work and make themselves unavailable to subordinates to create them.
TrueFalse
57. / Time and task management are major challenges for every manager.
TrueFalse
58. / According to Mintzberg, the three broad types of managerial roles include interpersonal, analytical, and critical.
TrueFalse
59. / Good executive functioning includes heavy multitasking and answering every e-mail nearly instantly.
TrueFalse
60. / The monitor function is an example of the informational roles often played by managers.
TrueFalse
61. / In interpersonal managerial roles, a manager acts as entrepreneur, disturbance handler, or negotiator.
TrueFalse
62. / Entrepreneurship means taking risks to try to create a new enterprise.
TrueFalse
63. / Two types of entrepreneurship include the extrapreneur and the intrapreneur.
TrueFalse
64. / Successful entrepreneurial companies have been called "gazelles" because of a characteristic they possess, namely an acute sensitivity to danger in the environment.
TrueFalse
65. / Entrepreneurs typically have a much higher need for achievement and a stronger belief in personal control of destiny than do typical managers.
TrueFalse
66. / Opportunity entrepreneurs are those who start their own business out of a burning desire rather than because they lost a job.
TrueFalse
67. / Researcher Robert Katz determined that through education and experience managers acquire technical, conceptual, and human skills.
TrueFalse
68. / Having required technical skills is most important among top managers at the highest leadership levels.
TrueFalse
69. / Human skills become less critical as one's career progresses, and are least important for top managers.
TrueFalse
Multiple Choice Questions
A. / supervision
B. / motivation
C. / management
D. / leadership
E. / strategy
71. / The pursuit of organizational goals efficiently and effectively by integrating the work of people through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling the organization's resources is called
A. / employment.
B. / career planning.
C. / competitive advantage.
D. / management.
E. / strategic planning.
72. / A group of people who work together to achieve some specific purpose is/are called
A. / managers.
B. / a collaboration.
C. / a team.
D. / an organization.
E. / a community.
73. / Tracy, a manager at a busy warehouse, was slow to hire new employees, preferring instead to encourage improvements from his current staff. He carefully watched his other costs too, performing equipment maintenance on a regular basis to improve its lifespan. Tracy would best be described as a(n) _____ manager.
A. / efficient
B. / ethical
C. / innovative
D. / effective
E. / micro
74. / To be ______as a manager means to make the right decisions and successfully carry them out to achieve goals.
A. / productive
B. / ethical
C. / efficient
D. / effective
E. / innovative
75. / The ______effect states that a manager's influence on the organization has implications far beyond the results that can be achieved by one person acting alone.
A. / proliferation
B. / multiplier
C. / managerial
D. / halo
E. / additive
76. / According to a Fortune article, the scarcest, most valuable resource in business is not financial capital but
A. / renewable resources.
B. / government support.
C. / highly innovative technology.
D. / a young workforce.
E. / skilled, effective managers.
77. / Which of the following is the most likely payoff of studying management as a discipline?
A. / You will understand how to brand your organization.
B. / You will understand how to relate to and interact with your supervisors and co-workers.
C. / You will understand how to manage your family and close friends more effectively.
D. / You will understand how to deal with the media in a crisis.
E. / You will understand how to advance your career without guilt.
78. / Which of the following is not a reward for practicing management?
A. / You can build a catalog of successful products or services.
B. / You and your employees can experience a sense of accomplishment.
C. / You can stretch your abilities and magnify your range.
D. / You can be rewarded with money and status for your efforts.
E. / You can become exempt from many of society's ethical standards.
79. / Which of the following is one of the seven primary challenges facing managers today?
A. / Maintaining good records of what worked in the past.
B. / Dealing with a stubbornly static and immobile environment.
C. / Staying ahead of competitors through corporate espionage.
D. / Managing to achieve one's own happiness and life goals.
E. / Collaborating with competitors.
80. / Petra is a new manager for a household products company, after getting a promotion from an administrative job that she found boring. But now she frequently experiences ______, like when she had to explain the new product her team is developing to the CEO and several board members. As psychologist Csikzentmihalyi predicts, her ideal state would be an emotional zone between that and boredom.
A. / overload
B. / anxiety
C. / immodesty
D. / fear
E. / pressure
81. / The ability of an organization to outperform others by producing goods or services more effectively than its competitors is called its
A. / competitive advantage.
B. / quality.
C. / efficiency.
D. / innovation.
E. / effectiveness.
82. / Which of the following is not an area in which an organization must stay ahead of its competitors to achieve competitive advantage?
A. / Environmental action
B. / Being responsive to customers
C. / Innovation
D. / Quality
E. / Efficiency
83. / Which of the following is the most likely reason for the decline in fortunes of American newspapers, and their inability to exploit their competitive advantage?
A. / A poorer standard for news-gathering.
B. / Relying too heavily on advertising, rather than customer subscriptions, for revenue.
C. / Decline in newspaper readership over the last 70 years.
D. / Preference of customers for getting news in a nonverbal format.
E. / An increase in salaries and material costs within the industry.
84. / In seeking competitive advantage, the first law of business is to
A. / take care of your shareholders.
B. / take care of your stakeholders.
C. / take care of the customer.
D. / take care of the environment.
E. / take care of your employees.
85. / Finding ways to deliver new or better goods or services is called
A. / advancement.
B. / streamlining.
C. / innovation.
D. / efficiency.
E. / quality control.
86. / Customers are likely to put up with poor-quality products only if your organization is
A. / underperforming in innovation.
B. / using computerized customer service.
C. / the only one of its kind.
D. / in a very competitive industry.
E. / lacking strong environmental policies.
87. / By mid-century, the percentage of Hispanics (of any race) in the U.S. population is expected to ______, and the percentage of non-Hispanic whites is expected to ______.
A. / stay the same; increase
B. / double; decrease
C. / decrease; increase
D. / double; increase slightly
E. / stay the same; decrease
88. / The concept of a "flat" world means
A. / employees are learning to suppress negative emotion in the workplace.
B. / corporations are developing a preference for a new, flatter organizational structure.
C. / a recession now slows the economies of most nations simultaneously.
D. / globalization has leveled the playing field for emerging economies.
E. / businesspeople are now more conservative in their approach to investment.
89. / Though many advantages have been linked to e-business, studies show that employees are less productive when dealing with excessive ______volume.
A. / videoconferencing
B. / meeting
C. / e-mail
D. / telecommuting
E. / collaborative computing
90. / Paul has been tasked with creating a new microsite on his engineering company's intranet. The site will house company-approved design procedures and efficiency strategies for all employees. Creating the design microsite is a form of
A. / strategy management.
B. / e-management.
C. / project management.
D. / knowledge management.
E. / morale management.
91. / As a sales manager, you would have to decide how much leeway to give your subordinates in giving gifts to prospective clients in foreign countries. This is an example of the challenge of managing for
A. / your own happiness.
B. / globalization.
C. / ethical standards.
D. / sustainability.
E. / diversity.
92. / Economic development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs is known as
A. / environmentalism.
B. / globalization.
C. / ethics.
D. / the bottom line.
E. / sustainability.
93. / The company's culture most directly affects
A. / the number of competitors a firm has.
B. / the number of products a company makes.
C. / the amount charged for the firm's products or services.
D. / the manager's happiness.
E. / the education of the workforce.
94. / Which of the following is one of the four principal functions of management, also known as the management process?
A. / Organizing
B. / Scheduling
C. / Motivating
D. / Executing
E. / Monitoring
95. / Setting goals and deciding how to achieve them is called
A. / controlling.
B. / managing.
C. / planning.
D. / organizing.
E. / leading.
96. / When a manager at a software company is determining whether to hire more full-time programmers or possibly more temporary ones, he is engaged in
A. / planning.
B. / organizing.
C. / managing.
D. / leading.
E. / controlling.
97. / Because the various groups that help a manager reach company goals often have different needs and wants, resolving conflicts is an essential part of which management function?
A. / Planning
B. / Clarifying
C. / Organizing
D. / Controlling
E. / Leading
98. / A general manager at a department store is giving an important presentation to several departments to engage the whole staff in a new customer retention effort beginning this month. This is an example of
A. / planning.
B. / organizing.
C. / leading.
D. / controlling.
E. / marketing.
99. / Monitoring performance and taking corrective action as needed is called
A. / improvising.
B. / planning.
C. / organizing.
D. / improving.
E. / controlling.
100. / Aziz immediately halted production at his facility after seeing a report indicating the last batch had a high level of product defects, and restarted work only when the problem was discovered and fixed. Aziz is engaged in which management function?
A. / Repairing
B. / Organizing
C. / Monitoring
D. / Controlling
E. / Executing
101. / Management theorist Peter Drucker compared the workplace of the future to a
A. / pyramid.
B. / symphony orchestra.
C. / flattened oval.
D. / chess game.
E. / warship.
102. / Tonya is a structural engineer who works for a large international firm. She designs the concrete and steel structures that support even the largest and most complex buildings. Because of her high level of technical skills, Tonya is best referred to as a
A. / knowledge worker.
B. / blue-collar worker.
C. / self-managed worker.
D. / first-line worker.
E. / first-line manager.
103. / In the traditional management pyramid, managers are classified into ______levels.
A. / two
B. / three
C. / four
D. / five
E. / six
104. / A senior vice president is an example of what level of manager?
A. / first-line
B. / top
C. / leadership
D. / middle
E. / merit
105. / Managers who are future oriented, dealing with uncertain, highly competitive conditions, and who stay alert to long-run opportunities and problems are most likely to be
A. / first-line managers.
B. / functional managers.
C. / middle managers.
D. / general managers.
E. / top managers.
106. / Managers who implement the policies and plans determined at the highest levels and coordinate the activities of lowest-level managers are called
A. / executional managers.
B. / first-line managers.
C. / middle managers.
D. / functional managers.
E. / general managers.
107. / Derrick is a clinic director running a downtown Chicago facility for a large nonprofit health organization. He receives most of his strategic direction from the organization and supervises several department managers in his workplace. Derrick is a
A. / first-line manager.
B. / middle manager.
C. / tactical manager.
D. / functional manager.
E. / coordination manager.
108. / Managers who make short-term operating decisions and direct the daily tasks of the nonmanagerial employees are called